The Two Innocent Characters in "Old Woman Magoun"

The majority of the characters that are mentioned by name in “Old Woman Magoun” has an unlikeable quality. Old woman Magoun lets her granddaughter eat the nightshade berries, thereby killing her. Sally Jinks is dumb: “She really knew how to do scarcely anything” (419). Nelson Barry wanted to give his estranged daughter to a friend, Jim Willis, after losing at poker. The only characters that could be considered innocent are Lily Barry and Isabel Barry. Lily Barry acts like an innocent child. She trusts strange men, because they seem nice. She carries around her rag doll, even though she is fourteen years old. The narrator states, “She was very small, and walked like a child, with the clap-clap of little feet of babyhood. She might have been considered, from her looks, under ten” (420). She eventually dies because of her naiveté and innocence. Although Isabel Barry is mentioned a few times, her character only appears once. Her brother uses her as a maid: “Isabel, the half-witted sister, entered, bringing some glasses on a tray. She had learned with her feeble intellect some tricks, like a dog” (424). Because of the way these two characters are portrayed, the audience is meant to feel sorry for them. The other characters, except for old woman Magoun, you do not feel sorry for. We feel sorry for old woman Magoun because she lets the only thing she cares about die to protect her from her father and her father’s friend.